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glanced over and saw the nod he gave the other guy, not happy but intent. She wished she could call Billy, tell him where she was. If she could call Billy, she wouldn’t go to Randy’s. If she could call Billy, she’d get rid of this guy and head straight home.
    Katy backed out and pulled in behind the Datsun. Jesse cracked his knuckles and sighed. She saw the batting gloves. She mashed the brakes, kept her eyes on her hands gripping the steering wheel.
    “What’s wrong?”
    “Why are you wearing those gloves?”
    He opened his hands. “Yeah, not exactly sexy, right?”
    She nodded, watched his face for a lie. He glanced at her, embarrassed. “I’ve got this skin condition. My palms sweat, get these bumps that open up.” He gave a little shake of his head. “Not pretty, kinda like poison oak. I have to keep hydrocortisone cream on when it acts up. Keep a bandage on them. These gloves, they protect the sores.”
    “That’s awful,” she said.
    He shrugged, put his hands on his thighs. “It’s all right. It clearsup. Just flares up with the heat.” He smiled. “Now you know my secret weakness. What’s yours?”
    She felt herself blushing, shook her head.
    He gave a little laugh. “That’s all right. I can guess what your weakness is.”
    She smiled at him, liked that little secret game of flirting, not flirting, just working that line between yes and no. It wasn’t her way of mixing drinks that made her the best bartender in town, it was her way of mixing up the men, keeping them guessing. She looked away from him. “You think you know who I am?”
    “Yep.” He settled back, buckled his seat belt. “Don’t you buckle up for a ride? You really ought to.”
    Katy reached for her belt. “My mom made me have these installed. It’s an old truck.”
    “I know,” he said. “We’d all be better off if we listened to our mommas more often.”
    “Yeah,” she said. She started to press the gas, waited.
    “But mommas aren’t right about everything, are they?”
    “No,” she said. Her momma had never approved of any guy she’d ever dated. What did she want? For Katy to marry some professor like her dad?
    He nodded, looked ahead as if they were already moving. “You got to trust me on this.” He reached out the window and motioned for the guy in the Datsun to move on.
    “Trust you?” She laughed and pressed the gas and followed the car into traffic on the highway that would soon have them all heading out of town. She had a sick feeling in her stomach, knew what she was doing was dangerous. But she’d done dangerous before. Frank had pushed her into doing things way past anything like safety. And Randy, hell, Randy was nothing but a risk. But she liked to take risks,liked that jangling feeling in her belly and something sparking behind her eyes.
    She told herself not to panic, just the way she told herself not to panic when her daddy played his hunting games with guns. They lived in the country, so nobody really worried about guns going off. Boys were often out shooting cans off logs, road signs, possums. Her daddy was just another one of those boys grown up. He would sit at the open window of what he called his office but was really his gunroom. He’d keep his eye on the garbage cans out back, just waiting for the scent to draw some roaming dog. He hated those dogs getting in his trash, making a mess in his yard. Then he got to where he liked to play a shooting game to keep them away. He’d call Katy in to test her. “Let’s play a little game. I can shoot that dog there or let it go. What do you want? If he gets in the garbage, it’s your job to clean it up. Or I could just shoot him. What do you say?”
    Sometimes he was just testing her. He would show her sometimes that there were no bullets in the gun. He was teasing. “Let’s see how much my tough little Katy can stand.” But lots of times he did shoot. Sometimes the dog yelped and ran off. Sometimes it dropped to the ground. “If you